


tare

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 06:43:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6413158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in this war, karna is berserker and arjuna is caster.</p>
<p>sibling vs sibling, snapshots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tare

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, America happened and my brain exploded and Fim designed a really awesome alter Karna and everything has been so much

The Caster that steps out of the summoning circle is exactly how she imagined him. His bare feet don't quite touch the ground, and there's the slight jangle of jewelry to his every movement. She keeps her head raised high, even though he seems impossibly tall. Cloth and shimmering orbs — she knows without asking, each orb is powerful enough to kill her just by touch alone, he's the kind of hero that carries those powerful blessings — hang in the air around him.

Unreal. Beautiful. Untouchable.

"Servant Caster," she calls out.

"I have heard the call of a Master and chosen to reveal myself. Are you the one who summoned me?" He asks, voice soft and polite enough.

She steps toward him and reaches up, pointing with her index finger at his face. One of the spheres in the air near him drifts close to her arm and burns her sleeve, reducing it to ash and leaving behind a welt on her arm in seconds. She doesn't retreat.

"That's me." She puts on her best wolf's grin, "I wanted to summon a Servant who killed their sibling. Tell me, Servant Arjuna, can you grant my wish?"

(To Arjuna, descended recently from the Throne of Heroes, the girl in front of him is young and stained. Her hair and eyes are violet with corruption and there is a taint that sloughs off of her like a stench. But she points to him, direct and driven. There's a deep determination to her gesture, to her stance and her voice.

She's already decided.)

"Well met, my Master." He bows his head, just slightly. 

Her fingers brush the crown of his head, she's only barely able to reach, "Tell me. . . tell me how it felt." She orders.

Her first order. He can't refuse as the seal burns off of her skin and they consummate their pact in an entirely different way.

* * *

She never meant to enter this war — but she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and the boy she had been trying to meet after school was now dead. The blond woman who had been at his side disappeared and she had no idea what was going on but someone was trying to kill her now.

It was selfish to wish for more, or to wish for someone to get involved for her sake. At her core, while she wanted to survive, more than that she wanted to strike back. Underneath it all, the terror and the fear and the pain she felt a deep twist of white hot anger.

Please. Deep from within her a wish is born: Give me the power to strike back.

The smell of ozone. A crackle of old power. Something in her veins stirs, something she hadn't known was there at all. The ground under her shines and a being of great power shimmers into existence next to her. He should be frightening, shrouded in darkness with a feeling of charred bone.

She thinks: he has kind eyes.

The only words he makes are garbled, unintelligible. His 'speech' could have been a growl, but she's struck with the feeling — burned into the back of her hand in the shape of a flower — this is her chance.

"I accept!" She shouts out, stands up tall and straight again. This is her chance to strike back. She won't be beaten down.

* * *

The story goes something like this: the Tohsaka family was very old and through a series of tragedies the most recent family head had died and left behind two daughters. Their mother had gone mad and their guardian, who was not a kind man, sent the younger sister off and away. The end result of the story is that the older sister is thrown into darkness and the younger sister learns to live a life of bliss.

Well, that is the general idea. Human life is never so easy to dissect and categorize.

* * *

"Are you always so cold, Caster?" She asks him.

"Because I have little interest in the affairs of this world?" His reply is as even as ever. She thinks he resembles a snake, often. Often still but with no doubt, someone who can strike at a moment's notice and so pristine that he's uncomfortably clean.

"That seems very unlike a celebrated hero." She links her hands behind her back and hops. Once, twice. It's a childish movement, but she's hard a child. She hasn't been for so long. "But it's because you're who you are, I suppose."

"Are you trying to provoke me? You may be my Master for this war, but it wouldn't be wise to continue this path."

"We're two of the same, don't you know? I realized it a long time ago. . . There's only one thing left to do in this world. I'm already a queen of everything I see, after all."

She smiles. It's a terrible smile because it's perfect. He understands that well — there is something in the back of her history that she found too terrible. So this smile is for that and for the girl she could be, the facade over the monstrous queen she became.

"It isn't a necessity that drove me, it was a choice of my own." It's a rare admission from him. A volunteered piece of information. But he understands exactly how she became this way and he distinguishes himself from it.

(Arjuna was fated to kill Karna, from the day they were reborn. He could not have escaped that any more than he could have changed his make.)

"Drives you, don't you mean? Berserker was summoned just last night."

* * *

"Sister," Sakura starts — even though the Tohsaka Rin in front of her is nothing like her memory. Rin, in the past, had a bright smile and a open way of being. She was the big sister who grabbed Sakura by the hand and pulled her forward and along. Rin was a warm memory that Sakura treasured over the years. This Tohsaka Rin is a magus.

"Hey, if it isn't Sakura." Rin interrupts her. She tosses her hair and points with her index finger. Dark light spirals at her fingertip. "Don't you know? We're in a war. Wake up, little sister."

Sakura doesn't have any magus training. She is a member of the archery club, she did a semester of track, she hasn't come armed with anything but herself and her Servant and a single scrap of power she learned from a girl with pale hair and red eyes. She takes cover behind a low concrete wall and drags her fingers through the tattered book. She only needs one chance, one spell.

Rin advances, taking shot after shot at her — but she's unhurried.

"This almost isn't worth my time! You're too novice, you should give up before you get killed!"

Sakura slices her fingertip and presses it to the correct page. She stands up and rips the page out as she calls out: "I won't be bullied, not even by you!"

The paper shreds and bursts into light. It's old magic — even older than the Tohsakas, a little piece of true magic that got left in the world. (It would have been a gift from another older sister to her little brother, but their story ended far too soon.)

"This much isn't enough!" Rin bursts through the white light even as its magic tears at her face and her skin and burns through her defenses. She leaps forward. Her hands press against Sakura's chest. Her fingers dig into the fabric of her school uniform, draw blood. For a moment, Rin might actually take her little sister's heart.

"Not even by you." Sakura repeats again with tears at the corner of her eyes.

The battle had just begun.

* * *

"You've fallen quite far," Arjuna can barely contain himself. His hand practically trembles, the many bangles around his wrist chime.

(Karna, still, is taller even in this form and even with Arjuna's feet that don't touch the ground. Karna, still, is pale and darkness, so much like the black heat of a sun spot. And Arjuna, as always, untouchable, silver, beautiful. Gold, silver, gems, jewelry and blessings adorn him.)

Karna's reply is wordless, probably thoughtless. It twists in Arjuna's chest. This is not the brother that he's chased after for so long, nor is it the brother he had found something deep and unnameable in. This is just a beast.

"Will it even be satisfying to remove you? A simple stain on this world and on both of us. Ah, I'd rather not get dragged down into your filth." He doesn't have to gesture, so he doesn't. Eerie and effortless. One after another the spheres that are his constant companions — brightly burning, beautifully terrible — shoot through the air to Karna.

It's an entirely one-sided battle. The Hero of Charity should never have been called up in this form, and for all that the madness gives him strength it's counter to his existence. Contrary to that point, it could be said that this Arjuna is "only a blessing". His very existence is distilled. 

Arjuna tears holes in Karna without getting close. Old black blood splatters the ground between them, and none of it mars Arjuna. It's only then that Arjuna steps closer. He stands close enough that Karna's breathing — ragged, wet, slowing — is the only thing he hears. The world is this moment, because even though he wishes deeply that this wasn't his fated rival, his eternal opponent and his brother, of course it is.

His hand hovers just above Karna's cheek — he's compelled to pull his hand back, to not touch _that_ existence and simultaneously to drive his hand forward, to gouge out Karna's eye. He does neither, frozen by the battling desires.

One thousand years. Over three hundred thousand days. More minutes than he could count. It all ends in the blink of an eye, Arjuna's essence rips sideways and disintegrates with no Master left to anchor his existence in the world.

Karna says nothing, he makes no sound at all, they'll meet again, after all.

* * *

(In another world, another universe, there is one thing that Tohsaka Rin cannot do — )

"I wanted to meet you again. Because I love you. Because I wanted to show you how strong I've become!"

(In this world, the one thing that Sakura can't do is lose to her older sister.)

The burned book lays on the ground forgotten. Sakura cradles her older sister's body, pulls her close against her and refuses to apologize. Instead in the moments they have left they talk about things that have happened, their wishes for the future — Rin admits she's been beaten fully.

"You've really grown up, I'm proud. Sakura," and those are the last words that Tohsaka Rin speaks.


End file.
